HP will make a major virtual reality push in June, when it will start shipping its Omen X VR backpack PC. The backpack PC has already been announced, but the company until now had not provided a shipping date. HP is accepting applications from gamers and commercial developers to test the product. There will be…
A U.S. Federal Communications auction of repurposed television spectrum has raised US$19.8 billion and will pave the way for mobile carriers to offer faster and more reliable service across the country. The 70MHz in new spectrum available will allow carriers to provide fast 5G service in coming years, FCC officials have said. It was the…
Microsoft this week again claimed that its Edge browser uses much less power than rivals, a key part of the company’s efforts to salvage the struggling Edge on Windows 10. “Microsoft Edge on the Creators Update uses 31% less power than Google Chrome 57, and 44% less power than Mozilla Firefox 52,” Kyle Pflug, a…
Slack is making it easier for coworkers to see what other people in their organization are up to, thanks to a new status-message feature unveiled Thursday. The functionality, which is rolling out to the messaging service’s customers over the next few days, lets users set a message in their profile that informs others about their…
Comcast Business announced Thursday it now offers direct, dedicated network links to the IBM Cloud global network. The move positions Comcast Business, a unit of Comcast, to compete against AT&T, Verizon, Bell Canada and telecom service providers already offering IBM Cloud Direct Link services. Comcast Business already claims to be the nation’s biggest cable provider…
The Travelers insurance company has teamed up with Symantec to give policyholders cyber security assessments and consultation in order to help them manage risks. The self-assessment consists of filling out a 25-question survey and getting a written report of how well their network and data protection stacks up. If they want to, they can talk…
An unpatched vulnerability in the Magento e-commerce platform could allow hackers to upload and execute malicious code on web servers that host online shops. The flaw was discovered by researchers from security consultancy DefenseCode and is located in a feature that retrieves preview images for videos hosted on Vimeo. Such videos can be added to…
Can an organization really cut development time more than 70 percent by embracing the agile philosophy and open architecture? The intelligence-gathering arm of the U.S. Air Force says it’s done just that. The Air Force’s Distributed Common Ground System, a network of 27 surveillance and intelligence-gathering sites, projects that it will ultimately save hundreds of millions of…
Aiming to provide data engineers with new and better tools for creating production data pipelines, Databricks yesterday released Databricks for Data Engineering, a new version of its Apache Spark-based cloud platform optimized specifically for data engineering workloads. Databricks, founded by the creators of Apache Spark, already provides a version of the cloud platform geared toward…
Just two days after Microsoft’s Windows 10 Creators Update arrived, HP announced two PCs that will come pre-loaded with the new OS. HP refreshed its Pavilion laptops and X360 2-in-1s with new processors and also is offering optional discrete GPUs with the new PCs. You’ll be able to select AMD Radeon or Nvidia 940MX graphics…